Compact OCT spectrometer suitable for mobile environment

ABSTRACT

A compact handheld optical coherence tomography (OCT) spectrometer according to an embodiment of the present disclosure includes: a spectrometer optical module; a sensor board coupled to one side of the spectrometer optical module and including a sensor that converts light received from the spectrometer optical module into an electrical signal; and a connector configured to supply, to the sensor board, a control signal and a power signal received from another circuit outside the spectrometer and to transmit a signal received from the sensor board to another external circuit, and the sensor board is packaged with the spectrometer optical module, and the sensor is not indented but is formed to protrude from the surface of the sensor board, and a light receiving portion of the sensor is configured to face the inside of the packaged component and collect light from the spectrometer optical module.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION(S)

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.17/110,998 filed on Dec. 3, 2020, which is a continuation ofInternational Application No. PCT/KR2019/006762 filed on Jun. 4, 2019,which claims priority to Korean Patent Application No. 10-2018-0064969filed on Jun. 5, 2018 and Korean Patent Application No. 10-2018-0086004filed on Jul. 24, 2018, the entire contents of which are hereinincorporated by reference.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates to a technology for implementing acompact optical coherence tomography (OCT) spectrometer suitable for amobile environment.

BACKGROUND

OCT is an advanced medical diagnostic technology that enables the insideof a biological tissue to be observed by using light and has been usedin the fields of ophthalmology, cardiovascular medicine and the like.The OCT can be implemented by such configurations as time domain,spectral domain and swept source. Particularly, the spectral domain OCTsystem ensures a certain level of performance and requires lessmanufacturing cost and thus has received a lot of attention.

FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram of a conventional spectral domain OCTsystem.

Referring to FIG. 1 , a spectrometer 1 is an essential component of aspectral domain OCT system and is configured to spectrally dispersereference light and sample light, which has back-scattered from abiological tissue, and then, to make a sensor detect the interferencesignal, enabling a structural signal of the inside of the biologicaltissue to be acquired.

Also, OCT has expanded its market mainly in the fields of ophthalmologyand cardiovascular medicine but has not been widely applied to otherdiagnostic fields since it was invented in 1991. The main reasons forthis include the facts that the OCT system is expensive up to onehundred million won, that it is usually configured into a desktop orcart structure requiring a certain degree of installation space, andthat it requires high usage fees and medical insurance fees.

Therefore, if the OCT system becomes compact in size and low in price,it can be widely applied to various diagnostic fields. To this end, thespectrometer needs to be compact in size and low in price.

To accurately image the internal cross section of a biological tissue bythe OCT system using the spectrometer 1, artificial noises need to beminimized. Conventionally, part of light is reflected in thespectrometer due to a cover window of a sensor that converts light intoan electrical signal, and, thus, when OCT cross-section images aredisplayed, artificial horizontal line noises are generated.

However, the cover window is manufactured as a single package with thesensor and is difficult to arbitrarily remove. Further, in such a singlepackage, the sensor is usually indented from the surface, which hindersminiaturization of a spectrometer.

FIGS. 2A and 2B illustrates a sensor used in the conventionalspectrometer 1.

FIG. 2A shows the top surface of the sensor and FIG. 2B shows the sidesurface of the sensor

It can be seen from FIG. 2A that the conventional sensor is equippedwith a cover window on its surface and an actual detection region isindented from the surface and this can be seen from FIG. 2B.

Further, the conventional OCT spectrometer 1 does not take intoconsideration a handheld or mobile environment and thus is equipped witha power supply circuit for supplying power to a sensor circuit of thespectrometer 1 and a connector. Therefore, the spectrometer 1 needs tobe connected to a separate power adaptor, which is an obstacle tominiaturization of a spectrometer.

Furthermore, in a sensor board of the spectrometer 1, one needs to takeinto thorough consideration the sensitivity of a sensor. If thesensitivity of the sensor is high, fewer photons can generate asufficient current, but if the sensitivity of the sensor is low, ahigh-power light source is needed. This structure is not suitable for ahandheld or mobile OCT requiring low power consumption. Therefore, thespectrometer 1 using a sensor with high sensitivity needs to beimplemented.

When the sensitivity of the sensor is taken into consideration, the fullwell capacity of the sensor also needs to be considered. When lightreaches the sensor, photons generate electrons, and in this case, thenumber of electrons accumulated in each pixel for an integration timetill a saturation level is the full well capacity. No matter how goodthe sensitivity of the sensor is, if the full well capacity is low, thepixel is immediately saturated, and, thus, the intensity of an incidentlight signal is limited. Therefore, an OCT spectrometer suitable for amobile environment needs to be equipped with a sensor with highsensitivity as well as high full well capacity.

SUMMARY Problems to be Solved by the Invention

The present disclosure provides a compact spectrometer 1 suitable for abattery-powered handheld or mobile OCT device.

Means for Solving the Problems

To solve the above-described problem, according to an embodiment of thepresent disclosure, a compact handheld optical coherence tomography(OCT) spectrometer includes: a spectrometer optical module; a sensorboard coupled to one side of the spectrometer optical module andequipped with a sensor that converts light received from thespectrometer optical module into an electrical signal; and a connectorconfigured to supply, to the sensor board, a control signal and a powersignal received from another circuit outside the spectrometer and totransmit a signal received from the sensor board to another externalcircuit, and the sensor board is packaged with the spectrometer opticalmodule, and the sensor is formed to protrude from the surface of thesensor board, and a light receiving portion of the sensor is configuredto face the inside of the packaged components and collect light from thespectrometer optical module.

Also, the sensor itself may be manufactured to be embedded in the sensorboard without going through its own packaging process.

Further, a cover glass may not be provided on top of the light receivingportion of the sensor.

Furthermore, each of a plurality of pixels forming the sensor may have awidth of less than 10 μm.

Moreover, the sensor may be configured as a low-power circuit to operatewith a predetermined input power.

Besides, the deterioration of spectral performance may be minimized bydesigning the size of the focus of each wavelength component of a lightsignal received by the sensor to be smaller than the width of the pixel.

Further, the sensor board may be equipped with a voltage conversionunit, so that if the sensor board does not receive a predeterminedvoltage from the connector, the voltage conversion unit may convert asignal transmitted from the connector into another voltage levelrequired for power supply.

Furthermore, the sensor board may further include an analog-to-digitalconverter that converts an analog signal received from the sensor into adigital signal and transmits the digital signal to the connector, andthe analog-to-digital converter has a voltage range of the input analogsignal level from a noise floor to a voltage level corresponding to afull well capacity of the sensor, and the full well capacity may referto the maximum number of electrons accumulated up to a saturation levelfor a predetermined period of time in each pixel inside the sensor afterthe pixel receives light.

Moreover, the connector may transmit the digital signal generated by theanalog-to-digital converter to a main board outside the spectrometer.

Besides, the spectrometer may further include a correction moduleconfigured to perform the correction to an electrical signal valuemeasured from each pixel of the sensor, and the correction module mayperform the correction to reduce differences in electrical signal valuesamong the pixels caused by unequal photoelectric conversioncharacteristic values in the pixels and to reduce differences in noisefloor characteristic values among the pixels when no light is incoming.

Also, the correction module may perform the correction by subtractingthe factors reflecting different offset values of respective pixels fromthe electrical signal values measured from the respective pixels andthen dividing the resulting values by the factors reflecting differentgain values of the respective pixels for identical input light levels.

Effects of the Invention

According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, it is possible toimplement a compact spectrometer 1 suitable for a battery-poweredhandheld or mobile OCT device.

According to the present disclosure, it is possible to reduce the sizeand price of a spectral domain OCT system by reducing the size of thespectrometer 1, minimizing power consumption and implementing a sensorand an optical system as a single package.

Accordingly, it is possible to maximize the penetration rate of OCT,which has been limited so far, and generalize diagnostics based on theOCT. thus, expecting the expansion of medical insurance fees also.

In addition, the handheld or mobile OCT system can be positioned as apoint-of-care (POC) device, which enables doctors to visit patients evenin areas with poor access to hospitals and expand medical benefits withadvanced diagnostic devices.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram of a conventional spectral domain OCTsystem.

FIGS. 2A and 2B illustrates a sensor used in a conventionalspectrometer.

FIG. 3 illustrates the configuration of a compact OCT spectrometer and asubsequent signal processing stages according to an embodiment of thepresent disclosure.

FIGS. 4A and 4B illustrates an example of a sensor and a spectrometeraccording to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing processes of processing light incident toa spectrometer optical module according to an embodiment of the presentdisclosure.

FIGS. 6A and 6B provides graphs showing an exemplary process of securingthe linearity of output from a sensor board according to an embodimentof the present disclosure.

FIG. 7 and FIG. 8 are exemplary graphs showing the shape of a lightsignal shining on a pixel according to an embodiment of the presentdisclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Hereafter, embodiments will be described in detail with reference to theaccompanying drawings so that the present disclosure may be readilyimplemented by a person with ordinary skills in the art. However, it isto be noted that the present disclosure is not limited to theembodiments but can be embodied in various other ways. In the drawings,the parts irrelevant to the description are omitted for the simplicityof explanation, and like reference numerals denote like parts throughoutthe whole document.

Throughout the whole document, the term “connected to” or “coupled to”that is used to designate a connection or coupling of one element toanother element includes both a case that an element is “directlyconnected or coupled to” another element and a case that an element is“electronically connected or coupled to” another element via the thirdelement. Further, it is to be understood that the term “comprises orincludes” and/or “comprising or including” used in the document meansthat, in addition to the described components, steps, operations and/orelements, one or more other components, steps, operations and/orexistence or addition of elements are not excluded unless the contextdictates otherwise and is not intended to preclude the possibility thatone or more other features, numbers, steps, operations, components,parts, or combinations thereof may exist or may be added.

Throughout the whole document, the term “unit” includes a unitimplemented by hardware, a unit implemented by software, and a unitimplemented by both of them. One unit may be implemented by two or morepieces of hardware, and two or more units may be implemented by onepiece of hardware. However, “the unit” is not limited to the software orthe hardware, and “the unit” may be saved in an addressable storagemedium or may be configured to run one or more processors. Accordingly,“the unit” may include, for example, software, object-oriented software,classes, tasks, processes, functions, attributes, procedures,sub-routines, segments of program codes, drivers, firmware, micro codes,circuits, data, database, data structures, tables, arrays, variables andthe like. The components and functions in “a unit” can be combined witheach other or can be divided up into additional components and “theunits”. Further, the components and “the units” may be configured to runone or more CPUs in a device or a secure multimedia card.

The following exemplary embodiments are provided only for understandingof the present disclosure but not intended to limit the scope of theright of the present disclosure. Therefore, the inventions that performthe same functions in the same scope as the present disclosure are alsoincluded in the scope of the right of the present disclosure.

FIG. 3 illustrates the configuration of a compact OCT spectrometer 1 anda subsequent signal processing stages according to an embodiment of thepresent disclosure.

Referring to FIG. 3 , the spectrometer 1 may include a spectrometeroptical module 110, a sensor board 120 and a connector 130 which may beconnected to a main board 140 and a power supply device 150 of the OCTspectrometer 1.

The spectrometer optical module 110 is comprised of lenses, mirrors, andthe like within the spectrometer 1 and functions to guide a light signalreturning from a measuring target to get dispersed spectrally andappropriately reach a sensor.

In the present disclosure, optical components used in the spectrometeroptical module 110 may be reduced in size or integrated to miniaturizethe spectrometer 1, and an example thereof can be seen from FIG. 4B.

The sensor board 120 is coupled to one side of the spectrometer opticalmodule 110 and includes a sensor that converts a light signal receivedfrom the spectrometer optical module 110 into an electrical signal, andtransmits the converted signal to the outside through the connector 130.

Further, the sensor board 120 is packaged with the spectrometer opticalmodule 110, and the sensor is not indented but formed to protrude fromthe surface of the sensor board 120 (i.e., so as to be exposed to theoutside out of the surface of the sensor board), and the light receivingportion of the sensor is configured to face the inside of the packagedspectrometer and collect light from the spectrometer optical module 110.

Here, the sensor itself is mounted on the sensor board 120 without goingthrough its own separate packaging process and then packaged with thespectrometer optical module 110. Therefore, a cover glass which has beenprovided on top of a conventional sensor so as to protect the sensor canbe omitted. In contrast, if a cover glass is provided as in theconventional technology, it may cause a noise when an OCT image isgenerated.

The sensor board 120 may further include an analog-to-digital converter(ADC) that converts an analog signal received from the sensor into adigital signal.

When the analog-to-digital converter converts an analog signal into adigital signal, the minimum output of the digital signal needs to be setlower than a value corresponding to the noise floor of the sensor andthe maximum output needs to be set higher than a voltage correspondingto the full well capacity of the sensor.

Here, the full well capacity refers to the number of electrons generatedfor a predetermined period of time up to the saturation level by eachpixel inside the sensor after the pixel receives light.

More specifically, in general, when the intensity of an input lightsignal increases, if an output analog signal is higher than the fullwell capacity of the sensor, electrons are further saturated and thelinearity of the output signal to the input light signal is broken asshown in graph of FIG. 6A. That is, it is desirable that when theintensity of input light increases, an output voltage should begenerated so as to maintain its linearity as shown in graph of FIG. 6B,but in general, the linearity can be broken. Therefore, it is desirablethat analog-to-digital conversion should be performed within a range inwhich the linearity between the intensity of input light and an outputelectrical signal can be maintained by using a sensor with high fullwell capacity.

Here, even when the sensor has good sensitivity and the intensity of anelectrical signal generated in response to a certain input light signalis high, if the full well capacity is low, the acquired electricalsignal may not accurately reflect the light signal.

Therefore, in the present disclosure, the voltage set for theanalog-to-digital converter has such range that it can mainly digitizethe input voltages from the level corresponding to the noise floor tothe level corresponding to the full well capacity (i.e., within avoltage range in which linearity can be maintained).

A power source for the sensor board 120 may be implemented to beprovided by using a signal processing cable, such as a USB cable forcharging, rather than a separate power adaptor, and, thus, thespectrometer 1 can be compact in size.

Here, if power sources of various voltages cannot be applied from theoutside, a voltage conversion unit provided inside the sensor board 120converts a voltage signal received from the connector 130 through thesignal processing cable into another voltage required for the powersource to apply to the sensor, the analog-to-digital converter and thelike.

Further, in another embodiment, an additional circuit unit for noisereduction or electric shock prevention may be provided in the sensorboard 120.

In yet another embodiment, the sensor board 120 may be implemented as asingle board or may be implemented in two or more boards by dividing itsfunctions.

The connector 130 is connected to the sensor board 120 and configured tosupply a signal to the sensor board 120 based on a control signal and apower signal received from another circuit (the main board 140).Further, the connector 130 transmits a signal received from the sensorboard 120 to the main board 140 and is supplied with the power sourcefrom an OCT main body including the main board 140.

The main board 140 refers to a circuit board included in the OCT mainbody connected to the spectrometer 1 of the present disclosure. Acontrol signal generated from the main board 140 of the OCT main bodyand the power source generated from the power supply device 150 aretransmitted through the connector 130, and the main board 140 receives asignal acquired accordingly from the spectrometer.

Therefore, the digital signal generated from the analog-to-digitalconverter of the sensor board 120 is transmitted to the main board 140through the connector 130.

The power supply device 150 may be connected to the main board 140 totransmit the power source to the OCT main body and the spectrometer 1.Here, in the present disclosure, the power supply device 150 may beimplemented as a removable or rechargeable battery, since thespectrometer 1 is provided in a compact portable OCT device.

The spectrometer 1 according to the present disclosure needs to besupported by a mechanical design for fastening parts, packaging andabsorbing shock in order to withstand drops in consideration of ahandheld or mobile environment.

FIGS. 4A and 4B illustrate an example of a sensor and the spectrometeroptical module 110 according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

FIG. 4A shows an implementation example of the sensor and FIG. 4B showsan example of the spectrometer optical module 110.

Referring to FIG. 4A, the sensor is not packaged alone and not equippedwith a cover window in order to reduce an artificial noise. In order toenable compact packaging of the spectrometer 1, the surface of thesensor from which the cover window is removed protrudes from the sensorboard 120 to the outside.

Here, each pixel forming the sensor is manufactured to have a smallwidth of less than 10 μm, and, thus, when the sensor is manufactured asa single package with the spectrometer optical module 110 of thespectrometer 1, the overall size can be reduced. Further, the sensorneeds to be configured as a low-power circuit to operate with low powerconsumption.

Referring to FIG. 4A, the electronic circuit board including the sensorhas the detection region of the sensor protrude from the surface andthere is no cover window and is combined with the left end of thespectrometer optical module as depicted in FIG. 4B so that the overallspectrometer 1 can be compact in size.

The surface of the protruding sensor can be used in a geometric opticalsystem composed of lenses, a grating and the like as shown in FIG. 4B,and is suitable for integrated optics in which optical components areimplemented as waveguides in a plane through a semiconductor processesfor further miniaturization.

Further, one of the metrics for evaluating the performance of the OCTsystem is the optical detection sensitivity or optical dynamic range.

The optical detection sensitivity refers to the signal-to-noise ratio(SNR) assuming that fully reflective mirror is located at a sampleposition. Various noise components include shot noise, thermal noise,and relative intensity noise (RIN).

Therefore, as for a biological tissue with high scattering andabsorption, the system can be driven in a shot-noise limited environmentwhere a shot noise is extremely high.

In this case, as the integration time of the sensor increases, theoptical detection sensitivity increases, but the operating speed of thespectrometer decreases. Therefore, an appropriate compromise needs to befound.

Here, the optical detection sensitivity deteriorates as a light signalgo deep into the biological tissue and returns. The degree ofdeterioration is related to the ratio of the size of the focus of eachwavelength component formed on each pixel of the sensor to the width ofeach pixel. In the present disclosure, the size of the focus is designedto be smaller than the pixel width to minimize the deterioration of theoptical detection sensitivity.

In most multi-pixel sensors, the pixels are not uniform incharacteristics depending on semiconductor processes and thus have photoresponse non-uniformity (PRNU) and dark signal non-uniformity (DSNU).The former is slight variations in the amount of current generated foran identical amount of input photons, and the latter is slightvariations when light is not incoming. That is, the PRNU is the factorrelated to the gain of each pixel, and the DSNU is the factor related tothe offset value of each pixel.

In the present disclosure, the spectrometer 1 further includes acorrection module for performing the correction on an electrical signalvalue measured from each pixel of the sensor, and the correction moduleperforms the correction to reduce the differences in electrical signalvalues of the pixels caused by different photoelectric conversioncharacteristic values in the pixels and reduce differences in noisefloor characteristic values among the pixels when light is not incoming.

In this case, the correction module subtracts the factors reflectingdifferences in the offset values of respective pixels from theelectrical signal values measured from the respective pixels and thendividing the resulting values by the factors reflecting different gainvalues of the respective pixels for identical input light levels.

Therefore, a measured value of each pixel can be accurate only aftercorrected by using the PRNU and DSNU values for each pixel that havebeen previously analyzed. That is, the signal corrected as in thefollowing Equation 1 is obtained.

$\begin{matrix}{{S_{cal}(i)} = \frac{{S_{meas}(i)} - {{DSNU}(i)}}{{PRNU}(i)}} & \lbrack {{Equation}1} \rbrack\end{matrix}$

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing processes of processing light incident tothe spectrometer optical module 110 according to an embodiment of thepresent disclosure.

Referring to FIG. 5 , first, incident light is acquired by thespectrometer optical module 110 (S510).

The incident light acquired through the process S510 is subjected tocollimation through a lens provided in the spectrometer optical module110 (S520).

The collimated spectrometer signal is separated according to theirwavelength components (S530), and the separated spectrometer signal isfocused through lenses provided in the spectrometer optical module 110(S540).

Finally, the spectrally dispersed signal, which has been focused throughthe process S540, is detected by the sensor provided in the sensor board120 (S550).

FIGS. 6A and 6B provides the graphs showing an example of a process ofsecuring the linearity of the output from the sensor board 120 accordingto an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure.

The two graphs of FIGS. 6A and 6B are related to the degree ofsaturation versus the light signal. FIG. 6A shows an output signal(electrical signal value) of a typical spectrometer, and FIG. 6B showsan output signal (electrical signal value) of an ideal spectrometer.

First, referring to FIG. 6A, even if a light signal incident to aparticular pixel increases linearly, an output value (electrical signalvalue) at that pixel may increase nonlinearly as shown in FIG. 6A. Insuch a case, if the output value is used as it is, an inaccurate outputresult is acquired from the spectrometer.

Therefore, when the nonlinear output value is corrected to a linearvalue using a predetermined algorithm, a linear output value as shown inFIG. 6B can be acquired. Thus, an accurate output result can be acquiredfrom the spectrometer.

Here, in a predetermined algorithm, for example, a curve in a regionwhere the output value relative to the input light signal is linear isextrapolated, an ideal linear output value in a nonlinear region isderived, a lookup table of the ideal linear output value for a nonlinearoutput value actually measured from a specific input light signalintensity is pre-stored, and then, if the spectrometer is actuallyoperated and a nonlinear output value is received, the previously storedlinear output value is retrieved from the lookup table and providedinstead of the nonlinear output value. As another example, a functionincluding the nonlinear state may be derived by such methods as curvefitting and then, a function for converting the nonlinear state into alinear state may be calculated and applied.

Such compensation can also be added to the PRNU and DSNU, and, thus, itis possible to increase the accuracy of resulting values to be acquiredthrough the spectrometer.

In addition, a crosstalk compensation algorithm which can be applied toa conventional spectrometer may also be included. The crosstalk meansthat a sensor mounted inside the spectrometer is generally arranged in aone-dimensional form in which a light signal to be detected only withina single pixel leaks to adjacent pixels and is measured because ofnon-ideal operational characteristics of the sensor. Therefore, in asituation where a light signal is supposed to be incident to only onepixel, if electrical signal values of several adjacent pixels (about 1to 3 pixels on a single side) are measured and then extended to all thepixels, a matrix equation is produced showing how an electrical signalvalue supposed to be measured from only one pixel in an ideal state isactually measured. Here, an electrical signal value measured from apixel is corrected so as to correspond to an ideal electrical signalvalue by calculating an inverse matrix of the produced matrix equation.

FIG. 7 and FIG. 8 are exemplary graphs showing the shape of a lightsignal incident based on a single pixel according to an embodiment ofthe present disclosure.

Referring to FIG. 7 , in the ideal situation, if there is no crosstalkto the light signal, a signal is measured from only one pixel as shownin the drawing.

However, in practice, light signals may be measured from not only areference pixel but also other pixels as shown in FIG. 8 because of suchfactors as that electrodes of respective pixels are somewhat away fromthe position where light signals generate electrons.

Therefore, in the present disclosure, it is possible to appropriatelycompensate for such crosstalk according to the algorithm described belowto accurately measure a spectrum.

Hereinafter, the algorithm used for crosstalk correction will beexplained. Assuming that crosstalk occurs in three adjacent pixels andall the pixels undergo the same crosstalk, the spectrometer performscrosstalk correction according to the following equations.

y[1] = a0x[1] + a1x[2] + a2x[3] + a3x[4]y[2] = a1x[1] + a0x[2] + a1x[3] + a2x[4] + a3x[5]y[3] = a2x[1] + a1x[2] + a0x[3] + a1x[4] + a2x[5] + a3x[6]y[4] = a3x[1] + a2x[2] + a1x[3] + a0x[4] + a1x[5] + a2x[6] + a3x[7]…y[n] = a3x[n − 3] + a2x[n − 2] + a1x[n − 1] + a0x[n] + a1x[n + 1] + a2x[n + 2] + a3x[n + 3]…y[N − 3] = a3x[N − 6]a2x[N − 5] + a1x[N − 4] + a0x[N − 3] + a1x[N − 2] + a2x[N − 1] + a3x[N]y[N − 2] = a3x[N − 5] + a2x[N − 4] + a1x[N − 3] + a0x[N − 2] + a1x[N − 1] + a2x[N]y[N − 1] = a3x[N − 4] + a2x[N − 3] + a1x[N − 2] + a0x[N − 1] + a1x[N]y[N] = a3x[N − 3] + a2x[N − 2] + a1x[N − 1] + a0x[N], where

x[n]: ideal value supposed to be measured from an nth pixel

y[n]: Value actually measured from the nth pixel

a0: Ratio of a value actually measured from one pixel to an ideal valuesupposed to be measured from that pixel

a1: Ratio of a value actually measured from a first adjacent pixel to anideal value supposed to be measured from one pixel

a2: Ratio of a value actually measured from a second adjacent pixel toan ideal value supposed to be measured from one pixel

a3: Ratio of a value actually measured from a third adjacent pixel to anideal value supposed to be measured from one pixel

N: Number of pixels

The above-described equations can be arranged in a matrix form, and,thus, the following matrix equations can be produced.

Y = [y[1]y[2]…y[N]]^(′)X = [x[1]x[2]…x[N]]^(′) $A = \begin{pmatrix}{\overset{.}{a}}_{0} & {\overset{.}{a}}_{1} & {\overset{.}{a}}_{2} & {\overset{.}{a}}_{3} & \overset{.}{0} & \overset{.}{0} & \overset{¨}{0} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\a_{1} & a_{0} & a_{1} & a_{2} & a_{3} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\a_{2} & a_{1} & a_{0} & a_{1} & a_{2} & a_{3} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\a_{3} & a_{2} & a_{1} & a_{0} & a_{1} & a_{2} & a_{3} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\0 & a_{3} & a_{2} & a_{1} & a_{0} & a_{1} & a_{2} & a_{3} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\. & . & . & . & . & . & . & . & . & . & . & . & . & . & . \\0 & . & . & . & a_{3} & a_{2} & a_{1} & a_{0} & a_{1} & a_{2} & a_{3} & . & . & . & 0 \\. & . & . & . & . & . & . & . & . & . & . & . & . & . & . \\0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & a_{3} & a_{2} & a_{1} & a_{0} & a_{1} & a_{2} & a_{3} & 0 \\0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & a_{3} & a_{2} & a_{1} & a_{0} & a_{1} & a_{2} & a_{3} \\0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & a_{3} & a_{2} & a_{1} & a_{0} & a_{1} & a_{2} \\0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & a_{3} & a_{2} & a_{1} & a_{0} & a_{1} \\0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & a_{3} & a_{2} & a_{1} & a_{0}\end{pmatrix}$

Finally, the equation “Y=AX” is produced from the above matrixequations, and the following formula can be used to perform thecrosstalk correction from values actually measured.“X=A ⁻¹ Y”

In this case, although seven factors were used in the above matrixequations, three or five factors may be used for simplifying the matrixequations or nine or more factors may be used for refining the matrixequations. Also, much more factors may be used if the crosstalk occursdifferently in each pixel. That is, after factors are determined inadvance through measurement of the sensor, the factors are stored in astorage medium to form a matrix equation and the inverse matrix is alsocalculated in real time to perform crosstalk correction.

Further, in an optional embodiment, an equation for crosstalk correctionmay be simplified. This is because a complicated equation may causeslowdown in the computing speed of the spectrometer. Therefore,significant factors of an inverse matrix corresponding to a matrixequation are stored in advance, and, thus, a simplified equation usingonly addition and multiplication can be applied.

The above description of the present disclosure is provided for thepurpose of illustration, and it would be understood by a person withordinary skill in the art that various changes and modifications may bemade without changing technical conception and essential features of thepresent disclosure. Thus, it is clear that the above-described examplesare illustrative in all aspects and do not limit the present disclosure.For example, each component described to be of a single type can beimplemented in a distributed manner. Likewise, components described tobe distributed can be implemented in a combined manner.

The scope of the present disclosure is defined by the following claimsrather than by the detailed description of the embodiment. It shall beunderstood that all modifications and embodiments conceived from themeaning and scope of the claims and their equivalents are included inthe scope of the present disclosure.

What is claimed is:
 1. An optical coherence tomography (OCT)spectrometer comprising: a spectrometer optical module; a sensor boardincluding a sensor for converting an optical spectral signal receivedfrom the spectrometer optical module into an electrical signal; and acontrol unit including a correction algorithm for correcting theelectrical signal, wherein the control unit corrects the electricalsignal of each pixel included in the sensor when the OCT spectrometer isoperating, and corrects at least one of a crosstalk occurring inadjacent pixels of each pixel and a nonlinearity of a value of theelectrical signal with respect to the optical spectral signal incidentto the sensor, wherein, in order to correct the crosstalk of thespectrometer, when the optical spectral signal is incident to a specificpixel, the control unit corrects the electric signal based on a formulaincluding factors and an actual electric signal value, those factors aredetermined in consideration of the actual electrical signal valuesmeasured due to the crosstalk at the specific pixel and pixels adjacentto the specific pixel within a preset distance, compared to an idealelectrical signal value generated by the optical spectral signal at thesensor, and the actual electrical signal value is actually measured ateach of the pixels in a situation where the spectrometer is actuallyoperating.
 2. The OCT spectrometer of claim 1, wherein those factors arepremised on the formula for yielding the actual electrical signal valuesby a combination of the ideal electrical signal values and the factors,and the ideal electrical signal values are calculated through an inversecalculation expression of the formula.
 3. The OCT spectrometer of claim2, wherein the formula consists of a ratio of the actually measuredelectrical signal value compared to the ideal electrical signal value atany one pixel, and ratios of the actually measured electrical signalvalues at pixels adjacent to the one pixel, compared to the idealelectrical signal value.
 4. The OCT spectrometer of claim 3, whereineach of those ratios corresponds to one element of a matrix, and whenthose factors are defined in a matrix form, the inverse calculationexpression is derived as a matrix formula involving an inverse matrix.5. The OCT spectrometer of claim 1, wherein the preset distancecorresponding to the adjacent pixels is proportional to an intensity ofthe crosstalk.
 6. The OCT spectrometer of claim 1, wherein in order tocorrect the nonlinearity of the electrical signal generated by thesensor of the spectrometer, the control unit: has a linear electricalsignal value to be ideally produced from each of the pixels and anonlinear electrical signal value actually produced from each of thepixels when the optical spectral signal is identically incident to thesensor, based on at least one of a lookup table and a functionidentifying a relation between the linear electrical signal value andthe nonlinear electrical signal value, compares a nonlinear electricalsignal value produced at each pixel to the lookup table or the function,when an optical spectral signal is actually incident to the sensor, andfinds a corresponding linear electric signal value to compensate for thenonlinearity.
 7. The OCT spectrometer according to claim 1, whereinbefore or after correction of the crosstalk, or the nonlinearity of theelectrical signal is performed, the control unit performs additionalcorrection for photo response non-uniformity (PRNU) and dark signalnon-uniformity (DSNU), and the PRNU is a factor for a gain of eachpixel, and the DSNU is a factor for an offset value of each pixel. 8.The OCT spectrometer according to claim 6, wherein before or aftercorrection of the crosstalk, or the nonlinearity of the electricalsignal is performed, the control unit performs additional correction forphoto response non-uniformity (PRNU) and dark signal non-uniformity(DSNU), and the PRNU is a factor for a gain of each pixel, and the DSNUis a factor for an offset value of each pixel.